Suggestion Saturday: February 26, 2011

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems, short stories, graphics and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Dirge Without Music. A friend posted this Edna St. Vincent Millay poem on her blog. I’d never heard of it before but it is well-worth the time it takes to read it.

Amaryllis. This is one of the best short stories about how people can live in a ecologically sustainable way that I’ve ever read. Too often science fiction assumes that the lives of people in future generations will be short and horrific in part due to how we have misused the natural word.

A Psychological Phenom for Happy Parents…And the Childfree? While this blog post discusses how people use cognitive dissonance  when justifying their decision to have (or not to have!) children the points it makes apply to all sorts of choices. I’ve long suspected that people who go out of their way to rail against things that a) don’t affect them personally and b) are not harmful do so because part of them either isn’t sure if they’ve made the right decision or secretly desires that which they claim to hate.

Cochlear  Implants: Miracle Technology or Cultural Genocide? Where is the boundary between culture and disability? I have mixed feelings on this issue. What do you think?

5 Miserable Ways You Could Die. The violent deaths we often fear are statistically much less likely to happen than you’d think. I wonder what else in life we seriously under or over-prepare for?

 

What have you been reading?

6 Comments

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6 Responses to Suggestion Saturday: February 26, 2011

  1. Hey Lydia,

    Amaryllis was a great story. Thanks for turning me on to Carrie Vaughn.

  2. “The violent deaths we often fear are statistically much less likely to happen than you’d think. I wonder what else in life we seriously under or over-prepare for?”

    I don’t think anyone is prepared for cancer or aids.

    But it is interesting how truly low the chances are of dying of the things we fear most. We spend an incredible amount of time being afraid of and protecting ourselves from those statistically low possibilities.

  3. atimetorend

    re: cochlear implants, I’ve had this movie in my netflix queue for a while, still haven’t watched it, it sounds like it might be along similar lines to the article you note. It is amazing how so many things in life which seem black and white, especially from an outside perspective, are so much more complicated than we would imagine.

  4. atimetorend

    doh, forgot to paste the movie link

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